I think it was Caligula who used to shout exultantly over his
victims: "Ite feri ut se sentiat emori""strike him so that he
knows he is dying". Looking at his scared, sweaty face in the
newspapers this morning, I begin to suspect that some higher force
is exulting in similar fashion over Tony Blair. I despise the
Conservative Party. I despise it for what it has become. I also
despise it for its inability to win elections on more than points: a
real opposition to this Prime Minister would have won a crushing
victory in the local government elections yesterday, as opposed
merely to making significant gains. Even so, the Conservatives did
humble him by the scale of their gains. And he has been forced to
dismiss one of his most loyal Ministers and to strip another of all
effective power.

I have consistently loathed Mr Blair ever since I first set eyes on
him back in 1994. I knew then he represented everything low and
corrupt in modern England. My loathing at times during the Iraq War
reached levels I had never expected to feel. I prayed for his
resignation after that war. I longed for his disgrace and even some
formal punishment. But I am now content to see him still in office,
still squirming and grimacing as blow after blow brings him closer
to the inevitable end of his political career.

During the next few days, I have no doubt the cry will go up from
Downing Street that he cannot go yet, as he has yet to add the
finishing touches to what is called his political legacy. If that
were the only reason for him to stay in office, I might cry out for
the killing blow at once. But just look at the nature of this legacy.

He came into office talking manically about health, education and
the public services. His changes in education policy have done
nothing to check the growing illiteracy and philistinism of the
young. His health policies have increased spending on the National
Health Service without any improvement in quality as reasonably
measured. Indeed, I have never in all my travels seen hospitals so
dirty and so chaotic as I recently have in England. As for the
public services, these have become naked job creation schemes
directly and indirectly for those inclined to vote Labour. That is
so for the immense number of unskilled ancillary and office workers
taken on. It is so also for those in the middle classes with the
right opinions or the right connections.

It might be argued that we have prospered as a nation since 1997.
But we were doing that before. It was the reforms of Margaret
Thatcher and John Major that enabled our economic recovery from the
embarrassment of the 1970s. All the Blair Government has done is to
refrain from entirely reversing those policies in a world of
governments even more spendthrift and meddling than it has been.
This being said, it has loaded us with new taxes and stolen our
pension funds. And much of the prosperity since around 2000 has been
enabled by a mass immigration that has increased total output while
depressing working class incomes.

If it be for anything, Mr Blair will be remembered for two signal
achievements. The first has been to complete the transformation of
this country into a panopticon police state. With measures such as -
though not restricted toThe Regulatory of Investigatory Powers
Act 2000, the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, The Civil Contingencies
Act 2005, and The Terrorism Act 2005, plus his recent forcing
through of identity card legislation, he has subjected us to levels
of state intrusion never before known in this country, or perhaps in
any other liberal democracy. He has employed thousands more Police
to oppress us. He has placed cameras everywhere to spy on us.

His procedural changes have abolished the double jeopardy rule and
allowed detention without charge and punishment without conviction,
and greatly increased the inquisitorial powers of the State. Where
substantive freedoms are concerned, he has enacted the modern
equivalent of the sedition laws that were used to such notorious
effect during the French Wars. He has thereby curbed our rights to
speak and publish as we please. Leaving aside the suppression of
debate on race and immigration and of defending those uses of
political violence the authorities choose currently not to like, it
seems to be a crime now to recite the names of our war dead beside
the Cenotaph and to wear shirts with messages insulting to the Prime
Minister. He has taken away our right to keep and bear arms for
defence. He has subjected us to the petty but still vexatious
control of officials of whom we must ask permission before we can
play music in our gardens, or extend a ring main in our homes. He
has created in the past nine years a thousand new criminal offences.
He has made true for us our old sneer at the Germansthat whatever
is not compulsory is illegal.

His one arguably liberal measure in this time has been to end the
legal persecution of homosexuals. That is to be welcomed. But it has
been balanced by the granting of legal privileges no less
objectionable than the old persecution. In modern England,
homosexual orgies are legal: heterosexual orgies are not. Worse
still, anyone who calls homosexuals the Spawn of Satanor even in
the mildest way suggests they may not make the best adoptive parents&3151;can
expect a call from the Police. This is not liberalism, rightly
considered. It is politically correct vote-buying. It falls into the
same category as his law against making fun of Islam and his
canonisation of Stephen Lawrence.

Above all, turning to his second achievement, he involved us in a
war that contributed nothing to our national interest, that was
based from beginning to end on lies, that has increased the price of
oil, that has turned our servicemen from defenders of Queen and
Country into American sepoys, and that has led directly to the death
of perhaps 100,000 Iraqi civilians. It is Mr Blair who gave us a
part in the blame for turning Ali Ismael Abbas from an ordinary
Iraqi child first into a seared and terrified victim of "collateral
damage" and now into a bloated cripple.

Let the man suffer, I say. Deny him the quick and dignified exit
from office that his colleagues have been urging on him these past
two years. Deny him too the mercy of an assassin's bullet. Let him
continue festering away before our eyes. Perhaps he will continue,
so long as he remains in office, to legislate evil into our national
life. But I doubt if any of his more likely replacements would do
less in that respect than he is now able to deliver. No, let him
suffer in public. Let his continued political failure take from him
every last hiding place for his vanity. Let his spirit fail him in
the glare of public hatred and ridicule. Let his health give way.
Let his home life be poisoned. Let him die reviled and alone. Let
there be truth in those religions that promise eternal torments for
his like. Let his name be accursed.

So let his career end in pain and humiliationbut not just yet.

Reprinted from Free Life Commentary, an independent journal of comment
published on the Internet. Editor: Sean Gabb. Issue Number 147, 6th May 2006
Issues are archived at www.seangabb.co.uk